"Value packed" is not a word I typically use to describe a headphone. I really thought the Beyerdynamic DTX 350 m was great for the money; definitely a good value...but not packed with value. Sennheiser's HD 600 is an extraordinary value...but no carry case; doesn't have a mic/remote; isn't useful portably. Still a great headphone and an extraordinary value, but packed with value? Okay, maybe. HD 800 S? Great headphone, but no friggen way anything over $700 is "value packed." The Quiet Comfort 35, on the other hand? Oh yeah, this thing will be a delightful traveling companion with technological, comfort, convenience, and solid sound quality characteristics abundantly.

Currently in the midst of a review, but needed to find a little something to post so I cruised over to my headphone news feed for a look-see. Kind of a boring week in headphone news, but one fun post came up so I said, "Meh, why not do a little news?"

Far be it for me to fuel the hype train...but this particular one appears to be an inter-city express on seamless rails screaming into our future at 350km/hr. I'm hopping aboard...even though I don't know exactly where we'll end up. Who cares when the tunes are this good. Roll on!

Were it not for the fact that I'm about to tell you so, there's nothing that would clue you in: The Beyerdynamic DTX 350 m ($59) looks about like any cheap plastic headphone you might run across at WalMart...but beauty runs deep with this one. Check it out.

With the rise of virtual assistants and bots, we'll increasingly talk to our smartphones through wearables instead of poking at their screens. Notifications and updates will be spoken to us through our wireless earbuds. Haptics will nudge and inform us with increasingly sophisticated vibrations. The electronics now used in smartglasses will vanish inside ordinary looking glasses and sunglasses, and we'll use them to take photos and videos with a tap or swipe to see high-resolution mixed- and augmented-reality images.

I've written such things tooit is coming. But the thing that's started to grind on me since I've started thinking about it is: Would I wear such a thing all the time? I mean, if you're really going to keep the thing in your pocket or purse...if you're really going to have it track your steps and pulse rate...if you're really not going to have the damned phone in your hands all the time, well, you're going to have to wear the smart headphones all day long every day. I don't know if I could...or even want to do that. I'm curious, what about you?

Headphones will never have the visceral impact and imaging of speakers. And speakers will forever be trying to play catch-up with the resolution of headphones...and will find themselves falling further and further behind as time goes on.

Incipio? Really? A cell-phone case maker? Sure, they may have a good distribution system, but I bet they don't have point of purchase displays in skateboard/snowboard shops. I'd hate to see the Skullcandy brand stamped blithely on cheap plastic crap.

Originating with the Foster OEM design (model 443741, page H-4 of this .pdf) and seeing the light of day first as the Denon AD-H1001, then the Creative Aurvana Live! (CAL!), this model has now been refreshed as the E-Mu Walnut. This is a lovely example of a companyin this case Creative Technologies in the form of its subsidiary company E-Mu Systemsrecognizing they have a solid-performer on their hands, and incrementally improving it. I wish I saw this more often.

A recent paper published in the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society titled "A Meta-Analysis of High Resolution Audio Perceptual Evaluation" by Joshua D. Reiss concludes:

In summary, these results imply that, though the effect is perhaps small and difficult to detect, the perceived fidelity of an audio recording and playback chain is affected by operating beyond conventional consumer oriented levels. Furthermore, though the causes are still unknown, this perceived effect can be confirmed with a variety of statistical approaches and it can be greatly improved through training.